Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a preliminary transcript of the Gemini 7 technical debriefing, dated December 23, 1965, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was made from tape recordings of the crew debriefing held December 19 to 21, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. In it, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell go through countdown, powered flight, insertion, station keeping with the booster, systems, experiments and training. The table of contents also lists a section on visual sightings during orbital flight.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: December 19-21, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 7 flight crew debriefing conducted December 19-21, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Lights and flashes are mentioned and there is discussion about having proper illumination for vehicle docking. Borman and Lovell discuss celestial and terrestrial observational anomalies and note sightings of Mercury, meteors, aurora, and lightning. They also discuss not being able to see any stars once the Sun comes up.

  • p. 25 15 Borman Could you identify any type of the debris? Lovell No, pieces.That is all…
  • p. 61 …LoveJl Frank thought it was in the reef ed con<lition for 3 months . Borman It…
  • p. 64 …Meanwhile , Frank ' s got the checklist out and the guys out there are putting on the…
  • p. 83 …Lovell We might mention here that both Frank and I think making adjust maneuvers without a…
  • p. 90 …We had no problems with air flow. :Borman It would have been a very, very difficult…
  • p. 93 …When I was out of the suit and Frank was in it, we put my suit…
  • p. 118 …Lovell Frank's was better than mine. Whenever I could I would give him the cameras…
  • p. 125 …Lovell It was a necessary evil, Frank. Borman We were a little concerned when we opened…
  • p. 141 131 Borman The reception on HF during the fl i ght was very poor. Lovell Right…
  • p. 172 …Lovell The magnitude of this laser is a lot less than either Frank or I suspected…
158
in the daylight--of course the site was not manned because
of the few pa sses we'd have to have . When we were over
Australia we didn't have attitude contro l .
Lovell We might menti o.n one thing. I think with the l ong flight
like we had , if we ha d the fuel we could have become more
skilled in observing the site and probably have gotten
better results .
Borman No , we coul d not have on thi s o.ne , because after the 3rd day
the clouds were the factor the whol e t i me. We had only
3 days to observe that , a.nd everything e l s e was c l oudy.
Lovell Okay , it was cloudy, but I suspect that the more pa sses
over the thing, you woul d get better. But we just did
not have the fuel and the weather was bad.
11, 5 Synoptic terrain ( S-5 ) and weather (s-6) photogra phy
Borman Synoptic terra i n a.nd weather photography. On unusual
or significant subject matter. Well , it turns out we did
not have any unusual or significant subject matter as f ar
as I know . We t ook the s equences and we took a l ot of
it as genera l photography that was not even called up .
Most of the time , it had t o be done i n drifting flight.
We were sorry about this , but there was not the fuel
availabl e. The two sequences that wer e called up (where
we were allocated the fue l from the ground) we t ook them. I
hope they were well done. We did get some

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.